According to those familiar with the matter, iTunes 7.1 is due for release within the next 45 days.

Does one have to be familiar with the matter to recognize that there are a few changes necessary to iTunes to allow this? Imho the AppleTV was to be integrated both like a iPod (“push content”) and a streaming client, and I guess on the like-iPod side, that couldn’t be possible without client changes. And if the AppleTV is to ship end of February, its only natural that there are no more than 45 days left. Reading updated news that it may even ship in the middle of February already, I could as well announce that an iTunes update is due within the next 30 days 😀

I’ve played around with recoding a few small fun videos to iPod format and put them into Firefly just to see how exactly this works. Takes too long for me probably, I’ll wait as well 🙂